I already brought her a cuppa Yorkshire Gold this morning--way ahead of you (one of the few advantages of being in a different time zone). It's the house brand around here (until the box sent by a previous year's Secret Santa finally runs out, anyway).

I shall not take 20,000. I have risen above such mundane and puerile things, leaving them for the childish and boorish. I shall, instead, content myself with preparing a few freshly-baked muffins for Mother, along with a nice pot of Yorkshire Gold tea.

We are thirty-nine from the Great DIvide, High in the mountain air; And tho' t'was one hellacious ride, It is all down hill from there. There's nary a doubt in my weary mind. None will e'er give up the ghost, But once we cross that Twenty K, We will coast, and laugh, and coast.

Heck, I've been out working - someone has to pay MOM's light bill. And I mowed the lawn at lunchtime. There's this spot between my house and the house next door that is like a solar oven at the noon hour. I thought I'd bake my brains before I finished that stretch of the yard.

I have since recovered. Keep up the good work, there are bound to be poachers hanging out behind the outhouse, just waiting to run up and ring the bell when no one is looking.

Mom, I am just back from the dentist. He is a nice man, but he did a root canal. I am glad he did it because it felt like my jaw was exploding slowly and now it feel fine. But my face was all rubber and it was hard to find where to eat through.

Ya know, Ma, I was jist a wonderin' how low they'd let ya fall. Well, I guess I know now. Sure, you wasn't in any danger but still, to be sixth from the bottom...well, I never heard of such disrespect in all ma born days. I tell ya, kids these days don't pay any attention to their elders and betters. Out racin' buggies all night and drinkin' that hootch stuff they get from the bootleggers and before ya know it somebody's wrecked the buckboard or worse. That Amos, for example, HE'S a fine one! You know, he had too much rum one time and Blind Bill slipped him a mickey and he woke up halfway to Santiago on a boat hauling pigs down and guano back. But you know all about him, doncha Ma?

Your claims are figments of a desperate imagining, and villainy in practice. I have no more forgotten those who brought us to this grand threshold than I could forget the very name of my own mother, Mrs. Whoozy.

That you should resort to such calumnies, sirrah, merely in order to obfuscate your own illegal claimancy on the Weiner of Twenty Kay, is an abysmal confession that there is not enough moral fiber in your diet.

Now nineteen nine and forty nine Have all been posted here. And though not all the posts were wise And some were quite unclear, At least we know, for true and sure, As clear as summer thunder That all those posts have added to A bloody giant number.

I have seen in dreams the turning of of the Grand, More fearful than a thousand Grecian ships. Ten thousand crying voices, to a man, Yelled out, "No dibs! No dibs! No dibs!" And in my vision I would make them calm And tell them to abate their friction, But they would not still, and cried again, "Mom giving dibs is sleazy fiction!!!!" And when the morning came, to wake Me from my vision in the dawn anew, I looked into my heart and found, 'Twas true, and ever shall be true.

"Bated point" is still used in historical, classical, and sport fencing to indicate a weapon with a blunt (or non-pointy) point. My rapier, for instance, has a rounded point instead of one that is sharp -- a bated point. Over it I can put a large rubber tip, or "blunt," to further insure that my opponent isn't harmed.

In Hamlet Shakespeare has Laertes fence with an "unbated" and poisoned point. The King (whose given name was Herman) says:

We'll put on those shall praise your excellence And set a double varnish on the fame The Frenchman gave you, bring you, in fine, together And wager on your heads. He, being remiss, Most generous and free from all contriving, Will not peruse the foils, so that, with ease, Or with a little shuffling, you may choose A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice Requite him for your father.

Later, Laertes says to Hamlet:

Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain; No medicine in the world can do thee good; In thee there is not half an hour of life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom'd. The foul practice Hath turn'd itself on me; lo! here I lie, Never to rise again. Thy mother's poison'd. I can no more. The king, the king's to blame.

More, in "The Merchant of Venice" Gratiano says:

Where is the horse that doth untread again His tedious measures with the unbated fire That he did pace them first?

Since you now know more about it than you ever thought possible I shall end my pedantics.

We still use "abated" in lots of contexts, and we still understand contractions and aphesis. So I think the author was just rising energetically to a defense of willful ignorance and/or linguistic lazery.

I agree, of course, that we should not be slaves to the language, but rather, its masters. But even the master 'bates on occasion.

BTW: The rest of the story, from a site called "World Wide Words." Good description.

It's easy to mock, but there's a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it has the meaning "reduced, lessened, lowered in force". So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing through terror, awe, extreme anticipation, or anxiety.

Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice: "Shall I bend low and, in a bondman's key, / With bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, / Say this ...". Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: "Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale".

Denver, the mile-high city.... Denver, where I and the rest of the National Guard company detrained in 1968 on our way to Ft. Carson and then to The War -- yes, armed and helmeted, drawn up in company formation across the street from a construction site with labor troubles, where the strikers first gaped and then started grabbing axe handles and other clubs...and then the buses arrived to take us away....

What a merry lot. After all these strenuous months and years of stern travail, rolling the endless rock of Pure B.S. up the Mountain of Great Numbers, it is a delight to see reinforcements heave into view.

Carry on, men and women of the MOAB. You shall see the glory of 20K off your bow before this week is out. This I promise you. Trim them tight, and never mind the heel; let the spray blow where it will, we are bound for twenty K.